Chester Burton Atkins (June 20, 1924 â June 30, 2001), better known as Chet Atkins, was an American guitarist and record producer who created, along with Owen Bradley, the smoother country music style known as the Nashville sound, which expanded countryâs appeal to adult pop music fans as well.
His picking style, inspired by Merle Travis, Django Reinhardt, George Barnes and Les Paul, brought him admirers within and outside the country scene, both in the United States and internationally. Atkins produced records for Perry Como, Elvis Presley, the Everly Brothers, Eddy Arnold, Don Gibson, Jim Reeves, Jerry Reed, Skeeter Davis, Connie Smith, Waylon Jennings and others.
Among many honors, Atkins received 14 Grammy Awards as well as the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, nine Country Music Association Instrumentalist of the Year awards, and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.
Biography
Childhood and early life
Chet Atkins was born on June 20, 1924, in Luttrell, Tennessee, near Clinch Mountain, and grew up with his mother, two brothers and a sisterâhe was the youngest. His parents divorced when he was six. He started out on the ukulele, later moving on to the fiddle, but traded his brother Lowell an old pistol and some chores for a guitar when he was nine. He stated in his 1974 autobiography, âWe were so poor and everybody around us was so poor that it was the forties before anyone even knew there had been a depression.â Forced to relocate to Fortson, Georgia to live with his father due to a near-fatal asthma condition, Atkins was a sensitive youth who made music his obsession. Because of his illness, he was forced to sleep in a straight-back chair in order to breathe comfortably. On those nights, he would play his guitar until he fell asleep holding it, a habit which lasted his whole life. While living in Fortson, he attended historic Mountain Hill School. He would return in the 1990s to play a series of charity concerts to save the school from demolition.
Stories have been told about the very young Chet who, when a friend or relative would come to visit, and if that person played a guitar, would crowd in and put his ear so very close to the instrument that it became difficult for that person to play. This was an early demonstration of his affinity for the instrument that would later become the focus of his life, and that he would take around the world, playing to packed concert halls from Nashville to the Boston Pops.
Atkins became an accomplished guitarist while he was in high school. He would use the restroom in the school to practice, because it gave better acoustics. His first guitar had a nail for a nut and was so bowed that only the first few frets could be used. He later purchased a semi-acoustic electric guitar and amp, but he had to travel many miles to find an electrical outlet since his home had no electricity.
Atkins did not have a strong style of his own until 1939 when (while still living in Georgia) he heard Merle Travis picking over WLW radio. This early influence dramatically shaped his unique playing style. Whereas Travisâs right hand utilized his index finger for the melody and thumb for bass notes, Atkins expanded his right hand style to include picking with his first three fingers, with the thumb on bass. The result was a clarity and complexity that became his unmistakable sound.
Later in life he lightheartedly gave himself (along with John Knowles, Tommy Emmanuel, Steve Wariner and Jerry Reed) the honorary degree CGP, standing for âCertified Guitar Playerâ. His half-brother Jim was a successful guitarist who worked with the Les Paul Trio in New York.
Chet Atkins was a Ham Radio General class licensee. Formerly using the call-sign, WA4CZD, he obtained the vanity call sign W4CGP in 1998 to reflect the C.G.P. name. He was an ARRL member.
RCA Victor signs Atkins
While working with a Western band in Denver, Colorado, Atkins came to the attention of RCA Victor. Siman had been encouraging Steve Sholes to sign Atkins, as his style (with the success of Merle Travis as a hit recording artist) was suddenly in vogue. Sholes, A&R director of country music at RCA, tracked Atkins down to Denver.
He made his first RCA recordings in Chicago in 1947. They did not sell. He did some studio work for RCA that year but had relocated to Knoxville again where he worked with Homer and Jethro on WNOXâs new Saturday night radio show The Tennessee Barn Dance and the popular Midday Merry Go Round. Still, it was a hard way to make a living for a family man for by then he had a wife and daughter. He even contemplated tuning pianos as a sideline.
In 1949 he left WNOX to join Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters back on KWTO. This incarnation of the old Carter Family featured Maybelle Carter and daughters June, Helen and Anita. Their work soon attracted attention from the Grand Ole Opry. The group relocated to Nashville in mid-1950. Atkins began working on recording sessions, performing on WSM-AM and the Opry.
While he hadnât yet had a hit record on RCA his stature was growing. He began assisting Sholes as a Session Leader when the New Yorkâbased producer needed help organizing Nashville sessions for RCA artists. Atkinsâs first hit single was âMr. Sandmanâ, followed by âSilver Bellâ, which he did as a duet with Hank Snow. His albums also became more popular, and he was featured on ABC-TVâs The Eddy Arnold Show during the summer of 1956; as well as on Country Music Jubilee in 1957 and 58 (by then renamed Jubilee USA).
G6122-1962 Chet Atkinsâ Gretsch Country Gentleman
In addition to recording, Atkins became a design consultant for Gretsch, who manufactured a popular Chet Atkins line of electric guitars from 1955â1980. Atkins also became manager of RCAâs Nashville studio, eventually inspiring and seeing the completion of the legendary RCA Studio B, the first studio built specifically for the purpose of recording on the now-famous Music Row.
Performer and producer
When Sholes took over pop production in 1957 â a result of his success with Elvis Presley â he put Atkins in charge of RCAâs Nashville division. With country music record sales in tatters as rock and roll took over, Atkins and Bob Ferguson took their cue from Owen Bradley and eliminated fiddles and steel guitar as a means of making country singers appeal to pop fans. This became known as the Nashville sound which Atkins said was a label created by the media attached to a style of recording done during that period to keep country (and their jobs) viable.
Atkins used the Jordanaires and a rhythm section on hits like Jim Reevesâ âFour Wallsâ and âHeâll Have to Goâ and Don Gibsonâs âOh Lonesome Meâ and âBlue Blue Dayâ. The once rare phenomenon of having a country hit cross over to pop success became more common. He and Bradley had essentially put the producer in the driverâs seat, guiding an artistâs choice of material and the musical background.
Atkins made his own records, which usually visited pop standards and jazz, in a sophisticated home studio, often recording the rhythm tracks at RCA but adding his solo parts at home, refining it until the result satisfied him. Guitarists of all styles came to admire various Atkins albums for their unique musical ideas and in some cases experimental electronic ideas. In this period he became known internationally as Mister Guitar (also the name of one of Atkinsâs albums).
His trademark âAtkins Styleâ of playing, which was and is very difficult for a guitarist to master, uses the thumb and first two â sometimes three â fingers of the right hand. He developed this style from listening to Merle Travis occasionally on a primitive radio. He was sure no one could play that articulately with just the thumb and index finger (which was exactly how Travis played) and he assumed it required the thumb and two fingers â and that was the style he pioneered and mastered.
He enjoyed jamming with fellow studio musicians which led to them being asked to perform at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1960. Although that performance was canceled due to rioting, a live recording of the group (After the Riot at Newport) was released. Atkins performed by invitation at the White House for presidents Kennedy through George H. W. Bush. Atkins was a member of the Million Dollar Band during the 1980s. He is also well known for his song âYankee Doodle Dixieâ, in which he played âYankee Doodleâ at the same time as âDixieâ on the same guitar.
Before his mentor Sholes died in 1968, Atkins had become vice president of RCAâs country division. He had brought Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Connie Smith, Bobby Bare, Dolly Parton, Jerry Reed and John Hartford to the label in the 1960s and inspired and helped countless others. He took a considerable risk during the mid-1960s, when the Civil Rights Movement sparked violence throughout the South by signing country musicâs first African-American singer Charley Pride, who sang rawer country than the smoother music Atkins had pioneered. But Atkinsâs hunch paid off. Ironically, some of Prideâs biggest fans were from the most conservative country fans, many of whom didnât care for the pop stylings Atkins had added.
Atkinsâs own biggest hit single came in 1965, with âYakety Axeâ, an adaptation of his friend saxophonist Boots Randolphâs âYakety Saxâ. He rarely performed in those days, and eventually had to hire other RCA producers like Bob Ferguson and Felton Jarvis to alleviate his workload.
Atkins retires from producing
In the 1970s, Atkins became increasingly stressed by his executive duties. He produced fewer records but could still turn out hits such as Perry Comoâs pop hit âAnd I Love You Soâ. He recorded extensively with close friend and fellow picker Jerry Reed, whoâd become a hit artist in his own right. A 1973 bout of colon cancer, however, led Atkins to redefine his role at RCA, to allow others to handle administration while he went back to his first love, the guitar, often recording with Reed or even Homer & Jethroâs Jethro Burns (Atkinsâs brother-in-law) after Homer died in 1971.
By the end of the 1970s, Atkinsâs time had passed as a producer. New executives at RCA had different ideas. He first retired from his position in the company, and then began to feel stifled as an artist because RCA would not let him branch out into jazz. (His mid-1970s collaborations with one of his influences, Les Paul, Chester & Lester and Guitar Monsters, had already reflected that interest; Chester & Lester was one of the best-selling recordings of Atkinsâ career.) At the same time he grew dissatisfied with the direction Gretsch (no longer family-owned) was going and withdrew his authorization for them to use his name and began designing guitars with Gibson. He left RCA in 1982 and signed with Columbia Records, for whom he produced a debut album in 1983.
While he was with Columbia, he showed his creativity and taste in jazz guitar, and in various other contexts. Jazz had always been a strong love of his, and often in his career he was criticized by âpureâ country musicians for his jazz influences. He also said on many occasions that he did not like being called a âcountry guitaristâ, insisting that he was a guitarist, period. Although he played âby earâ and was a masterful improviser he was able to read music and even performed some classical guitar pieces. When Roger C. Field, a friend, suggested to him in 1991 that he record and perform with a female singer he did so with Suzy Bogguss.
He did return to his country roots for albums he recorded with Mark Knopfler and Jerry Reed. Knopfler had long mentioned Atkins as one of his earliest influences, and the opportunity to perform with him was something of a surprise and treat to both guitarists of differing genres. He also collaborated with Australian guitar legend Tommy Emmanuel. On being asked to name the ten most influential guitarists of the 20th century, he named Django Reinhardt to the first position on the list, and placed himself at fifth position.
In later years he even went back to radio, appearing on Garrison Keillorâs Prairie Home Companion radio program, on American Public Media radio, even picking up a fiddle from time to time.
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